No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

”You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons; first of all, I think he’s a good actor. Ok. To me, that counts. Second; he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn’t fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that god was having trouble with. For years I asked god to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog. Joe Pesci straightened that cock-sucker out with one visit. ” — George Carlin

The USA has a bizarre thing called National Day of Prayer. It is an annual day of observance held on the first Thursday of May, designated by the United States Congress. Each year, the president signs a proclamation, encouraging all Americans to pray on this day. Its constitutionality is being challenged in court by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging President Obama to protect freedom of conscience by ending the unconstitutional National Day of Prayer. The Foundation needs 25,000 signatures before May 31.

Please sign ‘We the People’ petition. ‘We the People’ is set up by the White House to offer the public a way to petition the President.

End the unconstitutional National Day of Prayer, which violates the 1st Amendment. God and government are a dangerous mix.

Congress, in 1952, abridged freedom of conscience when, at the instigation of Rev. Billy Graham, it designated a National Day of Prayer, ordering the President to proclaim “a National Day of Prayer, on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.”

The U.S. President has neither the moral nor the constitutional authority to dictate to Americans to pray, much less to tell citizens what to pray about or set aside an entire day for prayer.

Whether to pray, or believe in a god who answers prayer, is an intensely precious, personal decision protected under our First Amendment as a paramount matter of conscience.

Don’t let Christian evangelicals hijack our secular Constitution.

A globalized stupidity. It’s called ‘World Day of Prayer’. The sad thing is, it is organized by women. Prayers are contagious. There is a Global Day of Prayer too. They have funny prayer alert. If the USA continues to celebrate National Day of Prayer, many countries will be influenced by the USA and will start celebrating prayer day by violating constitution.

Many countries mix gods and governments. But the separation of religion and state is urgently necessary. We do not need god’s inhuman, barbaric, unethical laws. We do not want anyone to say that god created some people rich and some people poor, to justify the gap between rich and poor. We do not want anyone to justify women’s oppression by saying men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other.

I respect Jessica Ahlquist for her fight to get a prayer banner removed from her school. We need more Jessica. We need organizations like Freedom From Religion Foundation in every country. We need to fight ignorance. We need to secularize the world. No sane person wants a National Day of Superstition.